Dear Crohn's, Please Quit. I Get It. Thank You.

One of my best friends had a horrible, horrible boss a few years ago. He was a bigwig in his industry. He did everything he could to make her life at work miserable. He berated her, and the rest of her colleagues, inflated his own self worth and did a good job at making the atmosphere surrounding him intolerable. He was an asshole.

This friend got on good terms with some of the other higher-ups at the company. After suffering this man for nearly a year, she finally got a glimpse into the inner-workings of his miserable self.

One of his good friends told her, "I think he's just like that because of his condition."

"His condition?" she asked, assuming he meant mental illness, severe personal loss. Trauma.

"He has Crohn's Disease."

It's been a long time since she told me that story, and it keeps coming up during times like these, when I feel a little bit like breaking down and taking a week-long nap. I don't feel good. I haven't been feeling great for the past week, maybe because it's been a pretty difficult one with Adelyn's sleep, and also because I've been dealing day-in-and-day-out with my insufferable insurance company. I had to Cobra my parents' insurance (my new job, although full-time, does not offer insurance that covers pre-existing conditions), and that means I had to take on a new prescription plan. Humira, the insanely expensive drug that keeps me feeling like a functioning human being, is considered a speciality medication and therefore extreme measures have to be taken to get it. Three weeks of countless phone calls and angry voice mails and I finally have it in my possession--and three weeks was just enough time for Crohn's to take hold.

I am not like the aforementioned man. Obviously. Not saying I'm the nicest, most compassionate person in the world, but I make a genuine effort every day to make the people around me feel good. Especially when I don't feel well. Running to the bathroom every thirty minutes is enough of a burden on living a happy life, why make it worse by letting it infiltrate the rest of your being?

After I started my first big-girl job out of college at a local news station, I had a few unhappy weeks when I realized that friends and being surrounded by people who immediately got you were no longer a guarantee. I remember dreading going into work in the beginning, not because I didn't like the job, but because I hated being the outsider. I hated being the youngest one there, the newbie, listening to everyone make their after-work plans for drinks and never being invited. It got to me so hard that I would sit at home before going in and wonder, ask myself deeply in my core, what I was doing wrong, what the flaw in myself was that was keeping me from making immediate connections. And after dwelling in this misery for a week or two it suddenly hit me how bored I was with all of it, the caring and stressing and letting stuff get to me and I just stopped. And then I was happy, enjoying my work and the people around me--until I got sick and pregnant and quit. Ha.

This week has been hard. I keep reminding myself of all this--that I have a definitive choice about how I want to feel. Adelyn can keep me up all night and my disease can stress me out to my limit, but it's completely up to me if I want these things to resonate within my spirit, to come to fruition in my demeanor and my relationships--the things that matter far more than sleep and how much my stomach hurts.

I choose--I chose a long time ago--to be just fine with it all, and that's the way it will remain.

(Crohn's, this is written to you. I hope you get the message and stop the campaign against me.)